


Tell us how the heavens flow

by mahkent



Series: Life's so reckless, tragedy endless, welcome to the family [5]
Category: Everyman HYBRID
Genre: Gen, past animalization, past dehumanization
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-17 05:26:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16510202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahkent/pseuds/mahkent
Summary: Modern, real.





	Tell us how the heavens flow

He's floating. 

It's an odd sensation, not being connected to his body, but it's one he's viciously familiar with. Maybe HABIT’s controlling him- one of the times it won't let him see what it's doing. Maybe he’ll wake up to blood on his hands and in his teeth, hair so much longer because HABIT can never remember to do maintenance on his body.

Distantly, so, so distantly, he feels his stumped fingertips so familiar. He got so used to them that having the fingertips of the child made him feel overstimulated, almost driving him to cut them off himself. Maybe the crack of his bone under metal shears would make him feel more at home; maybe if he ripped his stupid little child teeth out he could eat.

But really, nothing is quite as clear to him as Vinny’s soft fingers against his own. He’s quiet, but sometimes he hears that gentle voice sobbing _come back, come back, you're all I have-_ in a so adult voice, bonafide Vinny talking to him. Sometimes those soft fingers brushing over his hair, through it.

It fades with the thought of his master petting him.

* * *

However long it takes for his body to become his again, he doesn't know. All he knows is that when he wakes he's choking-

Drowned alive, no air, oh, god. Oh, god, he screams around whatever’s stopping the air- as much as he screams he doesn't hear anything but the shrill howl of some machine by his ear. He doesn't hear his own heart, instead feeling it thud so harshly against his sternum, it's going to break-

A hand hits his shoulder (pushing it down- was he thrashing? He isn't sure) and grabs something, a jerk of his neck and face, his jaw hurts so _bad_. Though his eyes are open he can only see white, someone above him a blur, is he being killed again? What-

Air, blessed air. He chokes on it in his fervor. This air tastes like a hospital- the stale breath of death and life, he remembers taking Steph there when their little girl was born and he remembers sobbing joyfully as he held his little girl; he remembers choking on blood after attacking the stick-in-the-mud, body shredding from the inside as he suffered horrific agony, Jeff holding him under the arms so he didn't collapse as Vinny tried to explain what happened to a nurse- and it makes him wonder what happened.

Sucking lukewarm air in again, he thinks back to what little he can remember. Bottles rattling in his hands, not-his hands, stolen from him. The _click_ of the caps as they opened and the way they stuck to his so human tongue. The tongue in his mouth now is flat, the one he came to consider his own after HABIT changed his body-

A tan something in his vision, dark hair coarse in front of its eyes- soft brown eyes like a doe’s and it’s shifting, frowning slightly, it’s his master-

* * *

Evan stares at him with wild, uncomprehending eyes. His lips are peeled back from animal teeth while he shakes, so small in the hospital bed; Vinny shifts his hand to rest on Evan's arm. 

“Ev?” He asks. Even the short syllable cracks in his anxious state- Evan unconscious on the ground when he woke, they both in a forest, Evan barely breathing. No sign of Jeff or anyone else. All he has left is his broken dog. The dog, his friend, he stares only at Vinny. Not the nurse who came in as soon as he woke up choking and panicking, not looking around, he just stares.

_I can sedate him again- just to calm him down._ She murmurs as Evan’s breathing rises to a whine. Vinny just nods (at some point he got power over Evan’s health, he supposes). Evan keeps staring, he keeps staring, his eyes are wide and confused.

She sedates Evan. It takes quickly enough, and she leaves Vinny alone with his poor dog who’s calming. Relaxing at the will of the drugs, his dog’s head lolls to the side as his muscles go slack. Despite the sedatives coursing through his dog’s body, Vinny sees that Evan is still awake. Lucid enough to trail his eyes over Vinny’s face, his lips curling into a loose smile.

“Evan, bud- it’s. It’s, we’re,” He sighs. Hands moving from his dog’s (his friend’s) hair to his own, running through it. “It’s- it’s twenty-eighteen again, man. It’s, we’re adults, there’s no Corenthal. No Jeff.” 

The blur of panic, finding Evan still and unresponsive, it nearly overshadowed how he saw his own hands. Adult hands, adult body; Evan on the ground was adult too. Small, his dog on the ground. Stumped fingers and sharp teeth hanging from his mouth- it’s Evan. Picking his friend up and stumbling out of the forest led him to a genuine city. Modern, real-

Evan doesn’t reply. He just smiles, eyelids fluttering. He just breathes slowly and surely as he doesn’t understand what Vinny’s saying. All he can ask for now though is that Evan’s alive, conscious, with him.

**Author's Note:**

> so those updates, huh? spoilers for the rest of this text.
> 
> not impressed with the twist. it feels very jump-the-shark-y. it feels stupid to have the entire rest of the series be falsified because of him being evil. especially when the whole crux of HABIT’s plan is that vinny suffered- if he were complicit and willing the whole time, it wouldn’t have worked. i don’t know. i’m waiting to see if they give us anything to explain the twist, otherwise i’m going to remain mildly disappointed.
> 
> a big mood though was evan waking up and immediately throwing the fuck down. 
> 
> story title is from "roman sky" by a7x.


End file.
